Murray won't seek budget resolution

Senate Democrats will not write a new budget resolution this year, Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray said on Friday.

The Senate will rely on the spending levels set by the two-year budget document written by Murray (D-Wash.) and House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and passed by Congress in December. Government funding runs out in October and Murray said her deal with Ryan will provide a sufficient guide to appropriators to keep Washington running into the next fiscal year.

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“We should work together to build on our two-year bipartisan budget, not create more uncertainty for families and businesses,” Murray said. “It wouldn’t be productive to relitigate it so soon after our two-year deal.”

Murray, who is also a member of Democratic leadership, said she does hope to lay out a long-term budgetary vision that would build on the Murray-Ryan framework. Her plan would likely to target tax loopholes used by corporations and the wealthy — generally not an area of agreement with the GOP.

A senior Democratic Senate aide said Murray had been speaking with other lawmakers in the weeks since approval of the Murray-Ryan Budget and that most senators assumed the chamber would not reopen fiscal partisan fissures on spending levels on the heels of a landmark bipartisan, bicameral deal.

“It’s unnecessary,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois on Thursday. “Remember what happened last year when we both had budgets and the Republicans wouldn’t let us go to conference?”

But Republicans immediately howled at Democrats’ decision to forgo producing a new budget.

“Senate Democrats are required by law to produce a budget. Our nation is in enormous financial distress, and workers and families are suffering. Senate Democrats have produced only one budget in the last five years,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

A spokesman for Ryan said it’s the House chairman’s “intent to again put forward a balanced budget” in 2014.

The Senate passed its first budget in years in March 2013, culminating in a more than 12-hour non-binding “vote-a-rama” on such hot-button issues as approving the Keystone XL Pipeline and repealing the Medical Device Tax. But the GOP blocked attempts to go to conference with the House on a bicameral budget agreement over worries Democrats would insert a debt ceiling hike.

The debt ceiling issue has already been dealt with — it’s suspended until March of 2015 — but Democrats see no reason to reopen the budget process back up for political votes and partisan bickering during a midterm election year and with general spending levels already agreed to.

“Republicans have made it clear that they don’t have any interest in actually debating a long-term budget in the Senate,” the Democratic aide said. “They just want to reopen the … budget so they can hijack the process to play politics and use a vote-a-rama for partisan and campaign-related show-votes.”